Zilean/Strategy
Recommended Items Tips ;Playing As * You can combine the use of and to place two on a target quickly. Placing the second bomb will detonate the first and all nearby enemies. * is an effective way to enable allies to finish off enemies, or escape from a losing battle. * is a powerful deterrent to attacking your carries, but casting too early in a fight can cause the enemy to switch targets too soon, making it less effective. ;Playing Against * If you're able to match speed, it can sometimes be beneficial to wait until his has faded before landing the killing blow. * is fragile if a team focuses on him, but otherwise he's very difficult to kill. Commit to killing him as a team. Tricks ;Ability Usage * Placing on allied initiators such as , , and as they are about to initiate on multiple enemies is a good way to help rack up burst damage. Using on champions with invisibility (Such as , , , , , , and ) can lead to a heavy unexpected nuke to the enemy team. * After triggering an enemy , place one bomb on one bloblet and another bomb on a different bloblet. As the timer ticks down, the bombs will get crawl closer together and more likely finish him off. However, if you quickly double bomb one bloblet before the rest get close, only one bloblet will be killed, and will revive. * Placing a on an ally as they teleport ( , , , etc.) may help you get an assist. ** Placing a on an enemy as they teleport may also get you a kill as they will most likely be teleporting to a fight. * You can combine the use of and to place two on a target quickly. As this causes the first bomb to instantly explode, this is main damage combo. If the first bomb is enough to kill the target, both bombs will explode. This can be very effective for farming and pushing. This combo costs a lot of mana, so you may not want to use it for harassing. * This strategy can be a good way to damage enemy champions standing near the target before they have a chance to shield themselves from damage. * s grant vision to allies. They can be used to scout unchecked bushes or over walls. ** Lobbing bombs into bushes can surprise foes for an attack. * Using bombs on your own or enemy minions, is a good way of zoning your opponent. If the enemy champion is melee, they have to either wait 3 seconds for the bomb to explode, or be damaged by the bomb if they choose to farm that minion. ** When sieging an enemy turret, have your allied champions clear the enemy minion wave. Place a bomb on the 2nd and 3rd melee minion in your ally minion column. They will carry the bombs forwards for you, possibly harassing a careless opponent under their tower. ** When has enough AP to kill melee minions with a > > combo, he can insta-clear all 6 by walking ahead of his minions to the enemy minion line, then lead the melee minions towards the caster minions. > > combo on a caster minion will clear the entire wave. This strategy can also be used to create a harder to dodge stun that still deals full damage, as it is harder to leave the blast radius of the bomb on the relatively immobile caster minion than it is to dodge one or both bombs. ** If the enemy has some sort of shield that can mitigate your bomb damage, use on a low health minion they are about to kill (smartcast helps). This transforms from a nuke with a 3-second windup to an instantaneous AoE damage nuke (without the use of ). ** If you have as an ally, you can place a on a minion she grabbed with her . When she throws it the minion will explode, dealing heavy AOE damage due to the combined forces of and . This is basically a long range AoE skillshot, which is very helpful at sieging and poking. ** Placing on a minion and then having an ally use a knockback ability on the minion (such as or ) into an enemy champion can deal long-range damage or finish of fleeing enemies. ** Placing a on certain uncontrollable pets will cause them to follow their masters around. This is great placement for a no-escape harass or instant kill at low health. This works most effectively on because she has little control over her , and on who cannot control his without a cooldown in his favor and an enemy in range. * Consider enemy champions shield durations or damage reductions when casting time bomb. For example, when casts , she takes reduced damage for up to 1.5 seconds. Therefore, a single bomb placed on her during will detonate 3 seconds later, with no damage reduction from . Also, waiting for to wear off before casting a second bomb will make her take full damage from the combo. This example is not as relevant after Irelia's nerf in patch 9.3, as only reduces physical damage. * Another example is , which shields and an ally champion for a few seconds. If casts on directly, he can one second before the bomb goes off to mitigate the damage. The safest way to damage him with two bombs is to quickly double bomb a minion that is in the vicinity, assuming that one bomb is sufficient to kill the minion. This would result in the AoE damage to be that of two bombs, since placing one bomb over another detonates the first and since the target dies, the second immediately detonates. However, this is very difficult to pull off and requires you to have high AP. ** This same technique can be used to harass them under their own tower without taking tower hits as well. * Use to get back to lane faster. * is an effective way to enable allies/yourself to finish off enemies, engage enemies, or escape from a losing battle. By using , can slow or boost an enemy or ally twice allowing an easy kill or escape. * Placing on an initiator such as , , , , , , and , while chasing an enemy champion running away, or out of position can allow the rest of your team to catch up and outnumber them once they are in range to apply their CC. * is 's only ability that is insta-cast. Casting another ability then in a quick sequence may end up the being cast earlier, hence the ability input next unaffected by as expected. * Use strategically for maximum effect. It can prolong the life span of yourself or a team member. ** You can bait low enemies to your tower by saving your till the last second to bait enemies into committing to kill you or die. ** Typically it is better to save for an AD carry or tanky DPS, don't use it to save a support unless you can tell the teamfight is almost over and no one else needs it. If the enemy team focuses you, use on yourself of course. If you save it you might die and not be able to use it at all. The benefit is the damage and CC you have absorbed only to come back to life. ** It can be difficult to cast on the ally teammate you want during a team fight due to champions being on top of each other, visual effects of spells, and losing your mouse cursor. Casting the spell on your allies portrait in the upper left corner of the screen will avoid this problem. If is out of range, he will walk towards them until he is in range and then automatically cast the spell. * In teamfights, can safely the allied ADC to help them kite back and forth, and the allied ADC as a type of peel by remaining behind the allied ADC or to the side of them. Also, can slow anyone trying to get to the allied ADC as well, however it only works on one opposing champion, so with multiple opposing champions rushing your allied ADC it may be more effective to speed your allied ADC instead. * 's greatest potential is unleashed around mid to late game, where the cooldown of his abilities will be ridiculously low, thanks to . * is viable as a support, trading your early game damage spike for utility. ** Placing on top of another provides an AoE stun, which can be helpful during skirmishes or teamfights. ** helps a Marksman kite better. ** is a great spam. A Marksman can kill enemies easily when their health bar was halved thanks to spamming beforehand. * can actually cast more than 2 in a single combo, thus allowing for multiple stuns. This is done by having a fairly low cooldown on (ideally less than 6 seconds, practically you should have rank 5 on it and a decent amount of Cooldown reduction). Cast the first on the target, then immediately . You then wait as longs as possible to cast it again. This way, will have enough time to refresh, allowing you to chain one more bomb and thus one more stun. ** Despite this combo, it's not adviseable to upgrade first instead of , given the huge amount of damage and wave control that zilean will lose this way. Also, his early limited mana access won't allow a large use of this combo. ;Runes Usage * ** allows Zilean to shield his allies when casting on them and when revives them. ** boosts the effectiveness of when casted on yourself. ** benefits both Time Bomb and Chronoshift greatly, as both abilities have high AP scalings. * ** can be proc'ed easily with Zilean after a single Time Bomb stun or Time Warp. * ** allows allies to heal off of enemies stunned/slowed by Time Bomb and Time Warp, respectively. ** can boost the healing of Chronoshift. Additionally, the rune will always grant the 15% bonus heal given the nature of Chronoshift. ;Item Usage * Building ability power is recommended, due to the high AP ratios on the damage from and the revive from . * Since all of abilities are spammable but mana-heavy, you might find yourself quickly running out of mana in the early stages of the game. To aid this, purchase for decent mana regeneration and for early harassment, which can be later upgraded into an . This is especially useful if one is also building other items providing mana like or . For support builds, this leaves more room for other items, as this is the only offensive item a support would need. * can be a decent item on him, with all its stats being very useful on him while also adding extra damage, either in lane or during teamfights. * Cooldown reduction is doubly effective on , since in addition to decreasing the cooldowns of his abilities it decreases the cooldown of allowing it to be used more often to decrease the cooldowns on your abilities even further. * A second choice for all the above stats is the aforementioned . In combination with 's shield, you will be able to heal them for a small amount. Despite its stats being all useful on , it may not be the best item, given the fact that you might be using warp on any ally, even tanky ones, while this item is best on ones with not too much health. * will greatly increase your burst damage. * When playing as a support, is the best item as it makes your hurt more and gives you a decent amount of ability power for to revive with more health. ** On the other hand can be risky, because if your bomb accidentally kills an enemy minion, you lose gold generation and stack generation, which may cause a drop in gold from the item, in addition to taking gold from your ADC. ;Countering * early harassment power can be mitigated by sending a tanky or healing champion to lane against him. You are more likely to win a battle of attrition due to his high early mana costs. Champions with the ability to silence also have an upper hand on due to his low defense stats * When caught by , you can force him to push the lane by intentionally damaging your minions with the explosion. ** Remember to stay away from your allies when he uses his on you so you won't unintentionally damage them. * Ideally you should attempt to take down quickly with enough burst power to prevent him from making use of . If this proves impossible, consider that you may need to focus on which of allies you can kill the fastest over which one is dealing the most damage. * mobility with makes it difficult to finish him off without a well-orchestrated ambush, for he can easily bait and win a fight with . However, his low natural defenses make him a good target for assassins. * is one of the strongest movement speed reduction abilities in the game. reduces its effectiveness. * cannot usually afford to increase his ability power by late game and his utility is less dependent on his item build. Attempting to kill during the laning phase should be a very low priority compared to farming minions. * is less useful versus teams with high sustained damage combined with crowd control like and . * is heavily susceptible to silence effects. If you have enough silence in team, you can try to silence when he is about to cast on one of his allies or kill him before he can use it on himself. * Building a or could save you if you get bombed twice and are running away. The shield from will activate before the 2nd bomb detonates. Activate when the bomb counts down to 1. Category:Champion strategies Category:Zilean